Location with a goto

[MARK3835]

Hi i need some advice on setting up a goto telescope. I am trying use my Garmin car sat nav as i location aid. When it displays my location it reads N51°55.137 and W000°07.778 How would i enter the 55.137 and 07.778 into my nexsatr+ hand control. The decimal point stumps me. I'd like to get a GPS Skysync but i think the price is a bit high for what it does. Thanks

[Cornelius Varley]

The handset doesn't accept decimal values for coordinates so you need to convert them into proper mapping coordinates. These should be entered as 000 07 47 W  51 55 08 N.

[HALO]

Struggling also with the synscan I've not a clue

[jambouk]

The precise lat / long is not important; being a degree or two out is fine. These coordinates are just used for the initial set up to identify what stars are likely to be in your patch of sky to suggest useful stars to you to align on; once you have aligned it doesn't really care.... There is a caveat to that in that it will also devise what is above and below the horizon, but i think this can be turned off. But if you are a degree out, it makes no difference. The same with the time, if you are an hour out, the only problem is during alignment for the first star, after that it won't care it will GOTO the correct objects.

James

[jambouk]

If you plan to park the scope and not do a new alignment, wrong lat/long and/or time/date will cause problems.

James

[MARK3835]

Thanks, I have a longitude/latitude appp which shows it in degrees, minutes and seconds which i assume my hanset uses but it still shows a decimal point and I'm not sure what to do with it. Cornelius is that just an example or how it should read. I'm rather new to all this so apologies for all the questions. I've been out 3 times now and not had a successful night viewing yet. I'm pretty confident I'm doing the star alignment right. When I'm finished setting up and i choose an object to look at, my scope points in the opposite direction.

[happy-kat]

How did you enter the date format when asked during setup?

(I think you would have been asked)

[MARK3835]

Hi happy kat, i entered the date as mm/dd/yy , I think thats the only format you can do. I just found an app called 'GPS Status and tool box' and you can change the location to different formats. I found a format and it shows my location the exact way cornelius explained it. So thanks everyone for your help and advice.

[MarkJ44]

Hi Mark, given you have put all of the information in correctly, you then do 2 or 3 star align, (it tell's you if this is unsuccessful), if goto is then not working the next thing i would ask is what is your source of power? When is started with a 5SE some time back i coudnt get goto to function properly until i got a decent power source, AA's just dont cut it.

[HALO]

I'm using AAs but there brand new

[Cornelius Varley]

Thanks, I have a longitude/latitude appp which shows it in degrees, minutes and seconds which i assume my hanset uses but it still shows a decimal point and I'm not sure what to do with it. Cornelius is that just an example or how it should read. I'm rather new to all this so apologies for all the questions. I've been out 3 times now and not had a successful night viewing yet. I'm pretty confident I'm doing the star alignment right. When I'm finished setting up and i choose an object to look at, my scope points in the opposite direction.

I converted the coordinates you supplied in decimal to degrees, minutes and seconds. This is a useful site to have http://itouchmap.com/latlong.html. You can zoom in to a precise location and then read off the coordinates in degrees, minutes and seconds. The seconds component needs to be rounded up or down as appropriate. Minus longitudes are W,